


The better side of me

by didsomebodysaysterek



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Jaeger Pilots, M/M, Pacific Rim AU, Stilinski Twins, memory sharing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 20:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/didsomebodysaysterek/pseuds/didsomebodysaysterek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Derek are Jaeger pilots and they're cancelling the Apocalypse</p>
            </blockquote>





	The better side of me

**Author's Note:**

> The Pacific Rim AU   
> Only mild bad language at this point. Rating may change later

When we were young and still impressionable we used to look to the sky and dream about flying to far off places to play chase amongst the stars with aliens. Stu and I would lie on the grass in the backyard of our small suburban house in Beacon Hills and conjure up mock battles in which we were always the victors. Stu liked to believe that we would be welcomed back as heroes but I was more realistic. If they were sending us would there really be anything to go back to?

  
The school psychologist told me I thought like that because I was a pessimist, but, really why would Earth send two scrawny little brats into space as their last hope? Yeah was never gonna happen. And the whole alien thing? I grew outta that pretty fast. Middle school bullies do that to you. Stu still believed but I had moved on. There was no such thing as aliens and all that mattered to me was the homework and avoiding my tormenters. I had never been so wrong in my life.

  
I was twelve when the first Kaiju hit San Francisco. Two thousand five hundred tonnes of angry hell bent on destruction. Wasn’t too pretty to look at either. At first people thought it was some elaborate publicity stunt. Godzilla 2 had only just been released in the cinemas so people laughed, took photos and congratulated BH Studios on a job well done. That stopped as soon as it hit the Golden Gate Bridge. It just walked through it like it was butter. Hundreds of lives ended as rush hour traffic plunged into the bay. By the time it the military arrived it had already destroyed half of downtown and over a quart million were dead. It took six days for them to take the Kaiju down. It had travelled inland destroying three cities and several small towns including our hometown. If I was to stand in our kitchen now and look out the window all I would see is a massive crevice where the Kaiju had stepped taking out over half of our neighbourhood. If it had stepped just a little to the left and I wouldn’t even have a house to stand in.

  
The high school was just over half way rebuilt when the second Kaiju landed in Manila. As ill prepared as we were they were even less. By the time troops were effectively mobilised much of the mainland was lost. But it was an impressive victory in the end for the Philippines’ forces. That take down is held as the gold standard and is used as a case study when training in troops and pilots.

  
Where did they come from? Why were they here? The second one no one really knows. Of course there are many theories including that the Kaiju are Gods and they’re mad because we’ve been worshiping a false God. Whatever. The first question is a little easier to answer. It surprised everyone when the scientists figured it out. Everyone had always thought that an invasion would come from above. Turns out we were looking in the wrong direction. When alien life entered our world it was from deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, a fisher between two tectonic plates, a portal between dimensions. The Breach they called it.

  
It took three more attacks before we realised this was not going to stop. This was just the beginning. The world came together, pooling its resources and putting aside old grudges for the greater good. To fight the monsters we needed to build monsters of our own. The Jaeger programme was born. There were problems in the beginning. The neural load of piloting a Jaeger was too much for a single pilot and casualties were high in the first few months of testing. They soon developed the two pilot programme sharing the load between the left and right hemisphere of two separate pilots. This in itself brought compatibility problems but it was a major breakthrough in the fight against the Kaiju.

  
The way it works still baffles me a bit but the lazy mans explanation is that the pilots sync with the Jaeger through the power of memories. The more powerful the memory the deeper the connection. Or something. Like I said this stuff is a bit beyond me. Your bodies also had to be compatible. It’s a bit like people who get organ transplants; if the organ isn’t compatible their body rejects it. If you’re not compatible with the other pilot....well the Jaeger spits you both out with only half a brain each. That’s why they tend to go with blood relatives, ones who shared the womb with you if possible. That’s where Stu and I come in.

  
Back when we were still dreaming of space travel the Jaeger programme really took off. We started winning. Jaegers were taking down Kaiju left right and centre. The danger that the Kaiju represented was crushed and turned into propaganda. National holidays popped up all over the world. Jaeger Day became a worldwide celebration of human strength and triumph. It was also the day that people got hammered on Jaegermeister but they don’t advertise that. The Kaiju became nothing more than toys and terrible kids Tv shows with the odd B-List Movie popping up every couple of months. Everybody had their favourite Jaeger and had their favourite kill recorded at home on their SkyBox. Every child wanted to be a Jaeger pilot. Everyone wanted to be a hero. I didn’t.

  
Stu and I were identical twins. We were born barely five minutes apart and apparently Stu had his chubby little fist wrapped around my ankle but that could be something the biographers made up to make childbirth seem glamorous. We came from a little backwoods community in the middle of nowhere, California. We came from a law enforcement family, the press liked to play that up as the reason we became Jaeger pilots. It wasn’t. We went to middle school and high school like everyone else. Stu was sociable and semi-popular and I was a loner and smarter than average. That’s it really, no big event that puts us on the Jaeger path, no big epiphany about wanting to save the world. Some people liked to fantasise and say it was our mother's death that made us want to be pilots. They romanticized it and made it seem like we were on a quest to avenge her unjust death. Whatever. She was a chain smoker and died of lung cancer. Nothing really unjust there. You smoke you died, it’s a rule of life. I used to hound her about it but all she would ever say was “I’m gonna die anyway,” then she’d blow smoke in my face. Don’t get me wrong she was a great mother, she was just cynical as fuck. Probably where I got it from.

  
In high school you never would have put us down as candidates for the Jaeger programme. We were at that phase where we didn’t agree on anything (I was right most of the time btw) and we were finally beginning to become our own persons. The future meant nothing to me but Stu had his all planed out. He wanted the American Dream with white picket fences and 2.5 kids. I just wanted to go to Comic-Con during the summer. Stu worried about who was in government and getting into an Ivy League college. I only really thought about who was going to play support in my next LoL match and the “gay crisis” I was going through (my “not –crisis” really. It is who I am and going with it worked out much better than going with society. )

  
Career Day, everyone always swamped the Jaeger stand. They always had an old washed up pilot from the Mark.1 days rehashing their tails of “bringing down the biggest Kaiju ever” and all the great opportunities there was for though that entered. I never stopped at that stand. I know Stu used to hang off their every word and was desperate to try the portable drift and mini Jaeger they brought every year. He was never able to because you needed two people and they only ever let siblings have a go. I always refused to take part. I don’t really remember why but I was a stubborn little shit back then (still am) and even Stu’s pleading could not break the cool determination I had not to touch Jaeger tech. My stubbornness was probably the reason I had no friends and Stu had many. “Oh my God Stu! How do you live with such an asshole? It must be so hard for you, here come to my party.” I was painted as the bad guy. Not that I cared all that much. Yes the taunts hurt sometimes (girls are surprisingly good at it) but I brushed it aside. I was a cynical asshole after all.

  
Nothing really changed until they got a new game at the arcade. “Kaiju Krusher” was a two person simulator game that had you taking control of a virtual Jaeger to take down virtual Kaiju. It was an instant hit. People used to queue outside the arcade before opening just to play it. I knew this because I had had a job at the arcade since I was twelve. All I ever really did was serve refreshments and sweep the floors, but hey it was a paying job and beggars can’t be choosers. Mr. Cared had to hire three more boys just to deal with the sudden influx of people. It was a “play till you lose” game. Most people averaged two to three kills before they were taken down. Mr Cared had hooked up a projector to the game and set up a mini cinema so people could sit and watch the players. They would shout criticism and critique each move then make exactly the same mistakes themselves. I really hated that game. Or maybe it was just the people who played it...

  
I really don’t know why I agreed to play a round with Stu. He had come to the arcade after it had closed to pick me up. (He had the jeep Monday through Wednesday that week.) The soda machine had decided that it hated us and was leaking all over the floor so I was running late. I’d say he was perched on the counter twenty minutes before he saw it. Its stupid theme music drew him to it. Of course he turned on the puppy eyes (which no one was immune to.) One perk of being an employee in the arcade was free tokens for all the games (I was the boss at Time Crisis). I really had no excuse not to play this time.

  
The game its self took up a large corner over by the back wall of the arcade. It was also a massive drain on the power but it made back three times that so Mr Cared didn’t mind it so much. The mini-cinema was set up just to the left. The worst thing about the game had to be the stupid soundtrack. It was just so goddamn catchy that I used to catch myself humming it even when I wasn’t at the arcade. I don’t really remember much of the game play but I do remember it was four hours and fifty-one kills later before we were finally taken down by a category four. The previous high score was six kills. Six kills and we had gotten fifty-one. I had never felt so invigorated. The feeling of power that came from the game was intoxicating. It was dangerous. I could see why people came back day after day just to have a few minutes of it. The power scared me. I never played again.  
Our high score caused a stir. People were more determined than ever to beat it. One group got to twelve but people rarely got to double digits. Some people got angry, called us cheaters. I’d never see so much hype over a stupid game. But it wasn’t a game. Not that we realised at the time.

  
It had been four weeks since our round on “Kaiju Krusher”. We had just turned eighteen. Ms Blake was droning on and on about unreliable narrators when the chopper touched down in the middle of the lacrosse field. I remember Coach nearly had a heart attack. I nearly had a heart attack myself when Marshall Deaton stepped down onto the fifty yard line.

  
Marshall Alan Deaton, now there was a man. Head of the Jaeger programme and a legendary pilot from the mark. 1 days. Thirty-six kills in old Mirror Phoenix before it was taken down in Tokyo by a category three along with his co-pilot. He walked with a purpose and had an air about him that demanded respect. He really had a no nonsense attitude and a critical eye that made you want to do better, that you had disappointed him somehow. By the time he got to the doors of the school we were all out in the corridor fighting for a place just to see this living legend. I kinda wish I had skipped school that day because the first words out of his mouth changed my life (and not for the better).

  
“Fifty-one kills,” he had said and I really wish he hadn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> As you can probably see grammer isn't really my strong point.  
> Thank you for reading. I'm on tumblr if you want to drop me a line: allthenamesiwantaregone.tumblr.com


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